If you have to fight this much to use a platform...why bother?
Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
21–30 of 152 posts
Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#22It was much easier and healthier for me to just leave Twitter (never gonna call it the other name). In fact, I’ve left nearly all of social media. It would be nice to get away from all algorithmic content feeds. Maybe someday.
It pains me but I’m leaning in this direction too. I found the idea of a digital town square with a commitment to maximum truth appealing, but seeing what Twitter has become it’s hard to not feel this was naive of me.
To me the big blow was seeing the response to what’s happening in Gaza and what narratives people and algorithms in combination end up promoting. The thoughtful, balanced, humanistic view gets approximately zero traction, while completely untruthful propaganda (on both sides) has enormous reach.
Maybe it’s an insurmountable problem. Human defense mechanisms in combination with algorithms will always push people to tribalism and cheering for atrocities. I hope not, but seems like it.
I guess you could take the OPs approach of filtering out all the propaganda and keep contributing. But then you are effectively working for a propaganda machine free of charge, helping create value that will draw others in to be subjected to the propaganda.
Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#23I'm personally a huge Elon fan, but I know many who are not and have heard from multiple sources that they can't get him out of their feeds no matter how hard they try. If you tweak your current idea to simply remove all Elon-related content from the feed, that would be funny but may also be strangely profitable (people would probably buy it out of spite).
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You won't get messages from Elon, but you will sure get a lot of messages about Elon since he lives rent free in so many people's mind.
Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#24I think this is a glimpse of the future. I can imagine ever-greater amounts of information overload, and AI used everywhere to filter it to manageable levels.
This sounds like an extreme waste of resources in all sides.
Extreme is right; I can only imagine the waste of power. It's probably exponentially worse than the waste of gas by postal services for delivering junk mail.
Except I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it in the US because of first amendment rights.
Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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You won't get messages from Elon, but you will sure get a lot of messages about Elon since he lives rent free in so many people's mind.
At the time of posting, I count 8 matches for "Elon" on this page and 23 comments. All of but one of the mentions has a negative sentiment.
Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#26Um yeah good idea in principle but for me if I don't want to see the bad content it's better to just not look at it. The hate is everywhere, even on positive posts in the comments.
But good idea yes.
Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#27[flagged]
Let's not promote divisions. Unless you meant: "people should stop using social media in which there are monetary incentives to be sensationalist", which I definitely agree on. I would love if we had more civilized discussions on the web, we would understand eachother better that way. But it's an impossible ask.
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Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#28I think this is a glimpse of the future. I can imagine ever-greater amounts of information overload, and AI used everywhere to filter it to manageable levels.
And on the other side AI being used to create more of it and to find ways to bypass the filters.
Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#29Its impressive how fast this is. I don't use twitter anymore (for the same reason as your use case), but nice job!
It's groq, they have amazing custom built hardware.
Re: Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed
#30It was much easier and healthier for me to just leave Twitter (never gonna call it the other name). In fact, I’ve left nearly all of social media. It would be nice to get away from all algorithmic content feeds. Maybe someday.
Social media apps have downsides, but I find the algorithmic short videos on facebook ("reels") quite incredible. The algo seems to suggest mostly science; niches I would never have known about, let alone had an active interest in, had the algo not suggested them. I suspect experiences using social media apps differ wildly from person to person.
X is by far the least fun social media app. I tried it and I never got the appeal. Just stick to insta for lighthearted content.